Bluetrace
by bravevulnerability
Summary: 'She had given him hope in the cold, a shot of warmth that unfurled inside his chest like sunlight, and he had let her freeze.' Episode insert for 3x17. One shot. Based on a tumblr prompt.


_**A/N: Episode insert for 3x17 (Countdown)**_

_**Written for a prompt received on tumblr: **When they opened the freezer door, Castle opened his eye, he was still awake and conscious, so he had to spend however long after Beckett passed out thinking she was dead, and he couldn't do anything._

_**Title borrowed from artist Stateless.**  
_

* * *

He couldn't feel her anymore. The sense of touch had abandoned him. But he still forced his weightless hands to hold her, brush the frost from her jacket sleeve even though it made no difference. He couldn't just stop, couldn't just sit motionless as she froze to de-

He couldn't think like that. She wasn't dead. Couldn't be dead. Not Beckett. Not Kate.

Movement was pain, piercing shards of ice through his veins, but he lowered his face, nuzzled his nose into the stiffening strands of her hair and inhaled deeply, desperate for the scent of her, proof that she was still with him.

All he received was the brutal sensation of needles puncturing his lungs as the icy air dove down his throat.

"Kate." he rasped, voice scraped raw. He pictured the vocal cords frozen in his larynx, the folds like icicles in the chilled cavern of his body, threatening to crack and break. "Kate, you have to stay. Can't – can't just leave me."

She had been telling him something, before her body had gone limp and lifeless in his arms, and it amazed him how vibrantly the hope had flared within him despite the situation. All because of a sentence she hadn't finished. He knew what she had been prepared to say though. And he just wanted the chance to say it back.

She had given him hope in the cold, a shot of warmth that unfurled inside his chest like sunlight, and he had let her freeze.

His limbs were stiff, practically immobile, but he used whatever preserved strength he had left to haul her into his lap and off the freezer's floor. He should have done that earlier, should have done whatever he could have to keep her awake.

"Kate," he whispered into the chilled skin of her forehead, cradling her snugly against him and curling around her even as his upper body felt like it was breaking into thousands of tiny, jagged pieces at the movement. "Please wake up. Please. Kate, I-"

A violent shudder rippled up his spine, momentarily jostling them both, but then his body finally went completely still.

They had both practically ceased shivering not too long before she had gone unconscious, only a few tremors wracking their bodies every few minutes, and he knew from what he had read in the past on hypothermia that that was a severely bad sign.

Of course hers had given up first, so frail and thin compared to his, but now he was following. He always followed.

Maybe it was fitting they died this way. At least they were together.

No. No, no, _no._

Castle blinked furiously, flakes of ice raining from his lashes like snowfall as he attempted to pull himself from the drugging darkness that was swirling at the edges of his vision.

He had to live. _They _had to live. There was still so much of their story left to tell.

"Kate," Her name had turned to a brittle whisper, hardly audible as it stumbled inelegantly out of his mouth, but he kept dragging it from his throat and tossing it into the frigid air. The idea stuck in his head that if he kept repeating the single syllable, they would somehow be okay.

But minutes later, when his heartbeat had turned to a slow, stuttering thud in his sternum and the frigid darkness was rapidly closing in on his vision, he gave up, hopelessly accepted that this was the end, they had finally met their fate. What else could he do?

Her name was no more than a breathless exhale on barely moving lips, his body a pillar of ice, and each blink took too many seconds until finally, he let his eyes fall closed.

* * *

Sometime later - seconds, minutes, hours? there was no way to tell - sound awoke him. It was muffled, like he was hearing it from underwater, but it was enough to briefly rouse his sluggish brain.

The sudden ruckus, the foreign flash of light breaking through the serene glow of blue, made him force his eyes to flutter open, his eyebrow twitching upwards curiously, just for a second, just to see.

For a fleeting moment of consciousness, he almost mustered the energy to be afraid, to feel fear, thinking the bombers had come back to finish them off. His eyes didn't stay open long enough to learn the truth.

* * *

Consciousness hit him at full force and his body jolted awake. No time to observe his surroundings or figure out how exactly he was still alive, none of that mattered. He only needed to know one thing.

"Beckett," he stated her name immediately, fighting weakly against the too strong arm of the paramedic. "Where is she?"

She had to be alive. She had to. If Kate Beckett was dead-

"Where is she?"

"She's going to be fine. You're both fine. Got to you just in time."

Rick's erratic heart settled at the news, and then sunk at the sight before him.

"Josh?"

He listened to the doctor - her boyfriend who was apparently _not _in Haiti - explain the moderate case of hypothermia he was suffering from. Castle tried to listen, tried to retain what the man was saying, tried not to resent him so much for playing a part in saving his life. Luckily, his attention was quickly drawn to Esposito and Ryan, who stood smug, but informative at the ambulance doors. He listened to the tale of how the two detectives had found them, how he and Beckett had been rescued. Then he glanced past Ryan's shoulder, and he saw her.

Standing off in the near distance of red and blue lights with a medical blanket draped over her shoulders and her hair in a messy bun, a small smile teasing at her lips, was Kate Beckett.

Some of the ice melted from his bones.

* * *

She had left his side after speaking with Agent Fallon about the case and he had caught only a glimpse of her stepping into her boyfriend's arms, but it was enough. It was too much.

He couldn't look at her.

_You know it's funny, when I first met you two, I thought you were together._

Fallon's words had made the chill return with a vengeance, seeping into all the lonely crevices of his body, spaces he wished he could fill with the renewed warmth of her.

_Just friends._

He couldn't look at her.

But it was all he wanted to do - look at her, soak in the color that had refilled her once ashen face and stare into those very much alive hazel eyes. He wanted to look and touch, feel the heat of her body against his, reaffirm that she was no longer a stiffened statue covered in frost. He wanted to touch her like he had in the freezer, only this time he wanted to _feel _her. But he kept his head turned.

Fallon stepped away, returning to his team, and the soft sound of her laughter across the parking lot drew his attention without his consent, and he looked at her, saw Josh's hands on her blanketed waist and her body comfortably pressed to his.

Castle clenched his jaw and turned his back to them, caught a glance of Ryan and Esposito off to the side at their squad car, both offering him a shared look of sympathy and support.

He couldn't look at her. Not now – not when she was literally in the arms of another man.

Castle sighed, almost laughed at himself. He'd foolishly thought a chance for them might have been on the horizon.

* * *

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